Colors: Wide Cerulean Blue Sky
by Liv Wilder
Summary: Pre-5x16 musing on 'Hunt'."The air is still, the bed remade – pristine, smooth and flawless. This space smells of him: of expensive soap, and his light cologne, of lavender fabric softener that lingers in her drawers and closets these days too. They are merging, their lives intertwining like the twisting, thriving shoots on a vine; healthy and fortified, full of life and prospect."


_A/N: 'Colors' is a collection of one-shots loosely linked by only one single element, that of color. This grew out of the response to 'Start Wearing Purple'. I'm not sure how many there will be or how often they'll be added to. I hope you enjoy this one. It's a pre-Hunt musing on what might happen when Castle attempts to get Alexis back. It's written entirely from Kate's point of view. No real spoilers if you've seen the promo for 5x16._

_**Wide Cerulean Blue Sky**_

And so he's gone.

She called but he wouldn't answer. He always answers her calls.

She waited, fought the fear, that tightening in her gut, twisting, winding taut like a rubber band around a General's pencil, torqueing until she felt something in her snap. The sapping pull of panic gnawing at her insides, eating at her, distracting, making her useless to him and to her – to Alexis – failing them both.

The loft was quiet. No one home. She used her key for the very first time – not a soul around to bear witness to this small victory in the war she continues to wage with her emotions. Minor skirmishes mostly these days, and she wins, she does, with him by her side, she wins them all.

But now he's gone.

* * *

She checks his bedroom, the peaceful womblike space they share so often these days, most nights really. His bed: as comfortable to her now as her own. A haven, a heaven; a place of exalting beauty for the magical heights they take each other to. A place to hide and heal from the world's great weights and disappointments, when they come to settle on her shoulders. He shelters her here, makes love to her here; their earthly paradise where the last brick in her wall was ground into dust by their fearsome, powerful, relentless love for one another. He reads to her here, and writes to her too; his novels an endless love letter he began years before _they_ became _them_.

But he's not here.

The air is still, the bed remade – pristine, smooth and flawless. This space smells of him: of expensive soap, and his light cologne, of lavender fabric softener that lingers in her drawers and closets these days too. They are merging, their lives intertwining like the twisting, thriving shoots on a vine; healthy and fortified, full of life and prospect.

She hesitates to snoop, but she's already here and time is running out, she feels it with every beat of her heart.

His shaving gear, toothbrush, hairbrush, his toiletry case and leather duffle are all gone.

His phone charger pulled from its slot in the wall, the emergency wad of cash he insisted on showing her '_just in case_', the safe empty of his passport and Platinum Amex card.

She screams, kicks the waste basket over, sending it spinning across the wooden floor, used tissues branded with her own red lipstick scattering like foam on the shoreline to taunt her, calling up happier times not forty-eight hours before when _they_ were _them_; unassailable, almost inseparable, irrefutably together.

Small gaps in his drawers and closet, his missing pea coat, black leather shoes, a tangle of plastic wrap and bent wire hangers lying in a pile on the floor hint at freshly laundered shirts packed hastily. The sight twists her insides afresh, robs her of oxygen, forces her to fight nausea and panic with all that she has.

Because he's really gone.

* * *

The drive to the airport is dangerous and frantic; a blur of nothing but her heart racing and decisions she makes on automatic pilot. She sees neither the road signs nor the exit she takes. She knows not where he's headed, only that she has to make it there in time to stop him.

"If you know me at all, you know that I'll do anything…I'm going to get my daughter back."

That's all she has. All he left her. A broken up voicemail from a broken man.

She's seen a side to him she never knew existed these last twenty-four hours. He told her that when it comes to the people he loves, that side to him indeed exists. She knew he meant her as much as his mother or daughter; has seen it in him so many times over the years - his fierce need to protect, to support, throw himself in front of that speeding bullet if he has to. But she failed to recognize it as this stark, uncompromising thing. It pricked at something in her today; realizing there was even more to him than the man she thought she knew, and she thought she knew all of him, inside and out. But now there's this, this dark side, a power, a drive, a hard masculinity that his beautiful clothes, expensive haircut and easy charm keep hidden most of the time. And she fears that it will be his undoing.

* * *

The sky opens out to her the closer she gets to that wide, open expanse. The boys pulled strings, made calls, dealt with Port Authority, the airlines. She's on her way, she will get there on time, she has to make it, her heart is hammering.

Sweat runs down her spine and she closes her eyes as she runs, feels his tongue on her skin, sweeping down, down, down, as he devours her. The memory is sharp, vivid and so beautifully painful. She shivers and runs on, her car abandoned curbside, time her most formidable enemy right now.

At Security the passengers dawdle, lost to the soporific haze of being managed through this process by other people. _Lose yourself, all ye who enter here_, she thinks, watching the slow plod of jacket removals, the laptop cases latterly emptied out, pockets still full of loose change that set the scanners off, women wearing heels, men with wrist watches, their dumb, zombie like stupidity making her want to scream out all over again.

Because she knows in this quiet and too loud place inside her own head, that he is already gone. That she is too late. She feels it in her heart: his absence from her orbit, a deep, dark pit of fear that has opened up inside of her. Not fear for herself, only for him, and what his brave, tender heart might lead him to when desperation turns this truly good man into the warrior who will do whatever it takes to find his daughter and bring her back alive.

He's gone. She knows it before the gate staff slowly shake their heads - lifted on wings of aluminum up into that wide, cerulean blue sky, heading into God knows what and the devil knows where.

He's gone, and she is left alone to face whatever comes next.

He's really gone.

* * *

_**Cerulean Blue **noun**:** Often used to describe the varying colors of the sky, cerulean blue is a light greenish-blue pigment consisting essentially of oxides of cobalt and tin. _In 1999 Pantone named **Cerulean** the color of the new millennium. They describe it as "the color of the sky on a serene, crystal clear day."

* * *

_Thoughts?_


End file.
